In a prior art, a user equipment (UE, User Equipment, or “terminal”) sends data and a reference signal (RS, Reference Signal) to a cell receiver, so that the cell receiver estimates channel fading by using the reference signal and uses the estimated channel fading to check the data sent by the UE; a base station may allocate orthogonal RSs to different UEs in one cell. For example, a base station in a long term evolution (LTE, long term evolution) system may allocate different cyclic shifts (CS, Cycle Shift) to different UEs to ensure that RSs sent by different UEs are orthogonal. In this way, the base station can receive signals of multiple UEs, and in this case, signals sent by the UEs of other cells cause interference in the reception of the base station.
To achieve randomization of inter-cell interference to avoid strong interference in all of multiple RSs in one data transmission process, an RS hopping technology is introduced. For example, in the LTE system, RSs sent by a UE in different timeslots adopt different CSs, and CS hopping rules adopted by UEs in different cells are different, and thereby, inter-cell interference may be randomized.
With the continuous progress of technologies, a coordinated multiple point transmission/reception (CoMP, Coordinated Multiple Point Transmission/Reception) technology is adopted, where a signal sent by a UE can be received by multiple cells so as to enhance reception performance. Although the randomization of inter-cell interference reduces interference between UEs to some extent so that a coordinated cell and a serving cell in CoMP may accurately demodulate the reference signal sent by the UE. However, during implementation of the present invention, the inventor finds that, in the prior art, in a combination of the CoMP technology and RS hopping technology, inter-cell interference is randomized, but it cannot be ensured that RSs sent by multiple UEs are orthogonal, which cause strong interference between UEs in the coordinated cell of CoMP, and reduces the reception performance of the cell.